[ic] Problems losing session & checkout

[Robert Braver]

Greetings all,

I've been working for several months on a new store and database to replace
an existing commercial web order system that we found lacking.  Since this
is my first posting, I'd like to say how impressed I am with the power and
flexibility of Interchange, and express my appreciation for the developers
and the participants on this list.

I originally set things up with 4.5.6 and later updated to 4.6.0.  My
project is highly customized and is based on the 'simple' template.  I am
using a multi-page checkout which I noticed is no longer available with the
'construct' demo provided with 4.6.0 and 4.6.1.

We finally switched over on New Years Day, and customer orders abruptly
stopped coming in, despite our own testing from various machines with
various browsers which revealed no problems.  After an otherwise very busy
weekend with higher than normal traffic, we found it very odd not to have a
single order after 18 hours.

Today we received a number of telephone orders from customers who had
difficulties ordering online.  The problems varied.  One customer clicked to
order an item and "nothing happened."  Another was able to put something in
his basket, but his machine "locked up" when he went to check out, requiring
a reboot.  When he came back, the item was still in his cart but again
things locked upon checking out.  Yet another customer was able to enter his
billing/shipping address information, but reported that "nothing happened"
when he clicked the 'NEXT ->' button to proceed.

We have since received a small tricking of orders, and I spoke with one
customer who was able to go back in and order online (while I was on the
phone) and found that it worked the next time around.  So I'm wondering if
some of the problem has to do with a cookie with session information not
being set correctly, which would tie in with the total lack of problems from
our various machines around here.

The only problem I have been able to duplicate myself is if I disable
cookies and try to check out.  Everything is fine until I get to the
multi/final page, at which point you can see the session ID in the URL
changing, and of course the basket is then empty.

Any suggestions as to things to check would be most appreciated.

BTW, the URL for the store is http://store.firmware.com

Regards,
Robert Braver
Micro Firmware, Inc.